Arrancar Force Five!
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: When the expedition to the human world takes a different approach, the gates of Hell are thrown open and maturity is the first casualty. Dumber than "The World's Worst Rescuers," sillier than "Stranded," I bring you a truly worthless piece of fiction.


**Arrancar Force Five!**

Someone had a sense of a humor, and a rather twisted one at that.

Tastelessness could be the only explanation for how deathly pale Ulquiorra Schiffer's _gigai_ had come out looking like it had just spent a year sunbathing. Beyond that, his solid body was almost a perfectly duplicate of his spiritual self, sans the things that would stick out in the mortal realm, like the half-helmet clinging to his head. It made Ulquiorra look like an egg yolk, Gin Ichimaru had once remarked.

And he wasn't the only one annoyed by his new body.

"This is stupid as hell," Grimmjaw Jagerjaques complained to no one in particular, waving the stump of his material arm.

"Maybe Zaera-Polo wouldn't have done that if you didn't go and really get your arm chopped off." Yammy snorted loudly from his place at Ulquiorra's side. He, too, had been almost exactly reproduced, although he now lacked the secondary lower jaw that had once been part of his mask. And, just like the rest of them, he looked surprisingly fashionable. Jeans, pullovers, sweater vests, tennis shoes, and other appropriately youthful apparel covered them from head to foot. They looked like they had fallen out of the world's most deranged fashion magazine.

The Sexta Espada sliced dangerous eyes toward the tall man. "Better to have half an arm than your ugly mug."

"That's enough," Ulquiorra suppressed a groan as he moved to head the argument off at the pass. His green, green eyes leveled themselves at Grimmjaw. "I don't want to hear any more of that from you on this mission. You have lost your rank as an Espada and the privilege to speak to us as such."

Grimmjaw bit back something nasty at that and decided to stare at another member of their group, who was busy playing with his hoodie.

"Human clothes are so much fun!" Luppi beamed at no one in particular, flipping his tassels absently.

"I don't see why humans want to cover up so much," Yammy groused at his confining denim clothes. One good flex would tear them open along the seams.

"Believe me, Yammy. Those clothes are doing our eyes a favor." Luppi didn't miss a beat.

The big man snorted in skepticism. "Anyone would be lucky to set their eyes on my rugged, manly physique."

"If that was the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning, I think I'd have to stab my eyes out with a rusty spoon," Grimmjaw deadpanned.

"Uuuuuuwaaaaa," Wonderweiss added thoughtfully.

"Enough," Ulquiorra said for what felt like the twentieth time. They had only just arrived in the human world and he already felt like a babysitter. Why, oh why, had Lord Aizen insisted that he bring Grimmjaw along? And why did Yammy insist on nipping at his heels? He didn't even like the other Arrancar. He smelled funny—funny-strange, not funny ha-ha. "We must proceed with the mission."

"Roger that, Green Leader. Operation: Vacation, in effect," Grimmjaw faked Ulquiorra's clipped, all-business tone almost perfectly. It was really quite terrifying. It made Yammy shiver. Luppi gagged. Wonderweiss burst into tears.

"Grimmjaw," Ulquiorra almost sighed. "Stop traumatizing Wonderweiss."

"Yeah, Grimmjaw," Yammy shot him a dirty look, taking Wonderweiss into his arms to cradle him like a baby. "He never did anything to you."

"He drooled all over Pantera!"

"Good," Luppi smirked. "They're a terrible band anyway."

"That's real funny, coming from a twerp like you. I'd take a killing machine like Pantera over some tree-hugging hippie crap like your _zanpakuto_."

Luppi didn't bother with a retort, but Yammy was there to get on his case again. "It took me nearly half an hour to get him calmed down the last time."

"Oh, come on! That one wasn't even my fault!" He wove his one arm defensively. "And the last one wasn't me either. How was I supposed to know he would wet his pants over machines?"

"Anyone would be afraid of letting you near their hair with a blow-dryer," Luppi sniffed, returning the conversation with a vengeance. "The boy may not know much, but he knows enough. He'd sooner die than wind up with a rat's nest like yours on his head. What is that even supposed to be anyway? You look like you fell out of the eighties."

"Stop it." Ulquiorra wished he could strangle them all. They were drawing far too many sidelong glances from the rest of the people on the bus. He thought he had overheard a woman dialing the police as quietly as possible to inform them of a gang that had boarded the bus. She had referred to his facial markings as "gang banger tattoos." When the time finally came to destroy Karakura, she would be the first to die.

"Where are we going, o wise leader?" Luppi bowed dramatically. Ulquiorra considered slapping him right in his sassy little mouth, but Yammy and Grimmjaw would only take that as a cue to start shooting the bus up with _ceros_.

"If we are to conduct our long-term surveillance mission with any degree of success, we must first allocate a base of operations."

Miraculously, the bus pulled up to their stop as Ulquiorra bade them stand and file out of the vehicle. They had arrived.

Grimmjaw spoke for the rest of the team.

"A motel? That's the best Lord Aizen, Master of the Freaking Universe, can come up with? Some lame, run down little motel? Aren't world-conquering psychopaths supposed to have yachts and airplanes and personal islands in the tropics? I've built match stick houses sturdier than this piece of crap! Jesus, Ulquiorra!"

"Jesus does not exist," the words burst out of his mouth before he could stop himself. His nihilism was acting up again. "What I mean to say is that this suits our purposes. Luxuries are unnecessary."

Ulquiorra's tone brooked no argument. The other three took turns grumbling in distress, while Wonderweiss glared suspiciously at the building like a child staring at a haunted house—which Luppi would have found hysterical, given they were all undead abominations.

The quintet made their way over to the small building that passed for an office. The door slid open with a ring that came from the bell at the top. Ulquiorra strode purposefully in and took a seat across from the proprietor while the other three stood and whispered bad things about him behind his back.

"We would like to rent a room." Ulquiorra's eyes bored a hole into the man's skull.

The man, a mousey little thing, suppressed the urge to run screaming from the room with a cry of 'Mommy!' It wasn't every day that a bunch of gigantic, one-armed, tattooed men ambled into your place of work without so much as a hello.

"Um…are you sure?"

"If were we unsure, we would not be wasting your time."

"There's—ah—four of you?"

"There are five." The human world's educational standards had surely fallen if a common man couldn't count to five.

The proprietor blinked. "You came in here with three people."

Ulquiorra cast a skeptical eye around the room to find that there were indeed four people in his party. "Where is Wonderweiss?"

"Hey, don't look at me," Grimmjaw snorted. "The kid may suck, but at least he doesn't blow as much as these idiots."

"I certainly wouldn't lay a hand on our dear, sweet, precious little Wonderweiss' platinum blond head, dear Ulquiorra." There was that facetious tone again. Ulquiorra would beat some manners into the boy himself, but he couldn't afford to attack him in public, not with the laws the humans. He would have to beat the boy behind closed doors, like any rational father would do. Or maybe he could tell Nnoitra that Luppi had been talking smack about him when they got back. Yes, a heaping helping of the world's most bizarre axe would surely make him straighten out.

He filed those thoughts away for another time, turning to the last member. "Yammy?"

"He was right here just a minute ago! I promise!" The Decima was already sweating under Ulquiorra's gaze. He still had a bruise from the last time Ulquiorra had raised his pimp hand to him.

"You were holding him last."

"I set him down."

"Why?"

"He was getting fussy. He doesn't like to be held after you burp him."

What followed was a silence so pregnant that it must have been carrying octuplets.

"You burp him?" That was Luppi, sounding like a kid on Christmas morning. Oh, this was just too good. He could get months of humiliation material out of this.

"Well, yeah, if I don't, he gets gassy. He's outgrown diapers, but he's still having a hard time with 'boom boom' sometimes."

Grimmjaw was up to bat next. "Damn, man, did you trade in your balls for a set of ovaries while no one was looking?"

The past and present Sexta had a good laugh at that, which marked perhaps the first time they had ever been chummy. It was almost too much for Ulquiorra to handle. What next? Pigs soaring over the icy reaches of Hell?

"Yammy's genitals are irrelevant to this conversation," he announced, trying to get things back on track. "Luppi, retrieve him."

He grumbled at that, but the boy obeyed, ambling out into the world in search of the cub.

"Feh, look at him, jumping at your every word." Grimmjaw grunted once the door swung shut. "Who needs a _Fracción _when you've got tall, dumb, and ugly right there?"

Ulquiorra tuned out the two of them and their running jabs at Yammy as he turned back to the proprietor. "As I was saying, we will be needing rooms."

"Hey, wait," Grimmjaw suddenly felt struck by a moment of bargaining genius. "We get a veteran's discount, right?"

Ulquiorra felt an ulcer coming on. "Grimmjaw…"

"No, really, I lost this arm serving my country."

The proprietor looked more confused than ever. "How did you manage that?"

"…in the war," Grimm replied, eyes darting evasively.

"Which war might that have been?" Ulquiorra countered, not so much because he cared for the factual but for the sake of spiting Grimmjaw.

Grimmjaw's lips puckered for a moment. "...it was 'Nam."

"Japan had nothing to do with Vietnam."

"You need to get your ears cleaned out, bud. I didn't say Vietnam. I said Korea."

"None in that war either."

"Okay, you got me. It was the World War."

"Which one?"

"Uh…"

"World War II, maybe?"

"Yeah, that's it!"

Ulquiorra thought to say something in response, but he felt carrying this conversation any further ran the risk of making himself as stupid as Grimmjaw.

"No, we're not getting a veteran's discount." Ulquiorra glared at Grimmjaw dangerously, a sign to let the matter drop. "Those rooms should be—"

"Oh, hey, look at what I found!" Luppi announced cheerfully as he slammed through the door. Wonderweiss was with him, dressed up in a children's Snoopy Halloween costume and a leash. "I found this little stray hanging around outside. I figured I would take him in out of the goodness of my heart—'cause I'm just such a generous guy and all—and I was thinking I might get a discount for being such a Good Samaritan!"

Ulquiorra's upper lip quivered.

* * *

With a snap of his fingers, Ulquiorra opened a hole in the fabric of space. It wasn't quite the same as a _garganta_, only useful for transmitting sights and sounds, but that was all he really needed to make his first report to Lord Aizen.

From out the murkiness, the lord and master of Las Noches came into focus. "Ah, Ulquiorra, I was worried. Your report is coming twenty minutes later than projected."

"There were complications." Ulquiorra resisted the urge to run screaming into the night at the recollection of the idiocy he'd been forced to sift through over the past twelve hours. "But they have since been resolved. The five of us has settled into our lodgings."

"Make sure you don't touch the remote," Gin Ichimaru's voice slithered out of the darkness somewhere off-screen. "I was watching this little show the other day, with black-lights and all, and you wouldn't believe how those motel rooms lit up. Just like a tree on Christmas. 'Specially the remote."

There was an awkward pause on both ends.

"Thank you, Gin," Aizen recovered first, smoothing interlude over as best he could.

"Ah, don't mention it, Cap'n. I was just looking out for the boys. Wouldn't want 'em to come back to the place with all sorts of germs all over 'em."

"You know, Gin, I think now would be a good time to hold a meeting with the remaining Espada."

Ulquiorra had to hand it to Aizen. He was good at thinking on his feet.

"Sure thing," the other man said amicably. And then, "Hey, Tousen! Go round up the brat pack! The Cap'n wants to have a little chat!"

There was a mild grumbling about the injustice of Gin passing his work off to others, then Tousen vanished from the room.

Aizen was visibly ill. "I gave _you_ the order for a reason, Gin."

"'cause you knew I was smart enough to pawn it off on Tousen?"

"Not…precisely…"

For a brief, horrible moment, Aizen and Ulquiorra's eyes met and neither one was quite sure who had it worse.

"Hey, Tousen!" Gin shouted after the retreating ex-Captain. "You can probably find that pink fella in Aaroniero's room if he's not in his lab. He loves those tentacles of his."

"Gin, go to your room."

"Aw, do I hafta?" Gin sing-sang in his best petulant child voice.

The signal suddenly screeched with static as Aizen forcibly shut off the line, although he did it in such haste and irritation that it remained semi-active just long enough for Ulquiorra to hear Aizen telling Gin not to use that tone of voice in his fortress.

* * *

"What are you all up to?" Ulquiorra addressed his subordinates as he stalked back into the main room. (They had decided on two adjoining room with a small doorway in between. It was usually reserved for families of four or more. The thought of the assembled idiots and troublemakers under his command as his family was almost enough to make Ulquiorra vomit with rage.)

Grimmjaw lay sprawled at the foot of a bed, clicking through channels absently, wishing he had his other arm back so he could do something suitably masculine at the same time…like scratching his crotch. Wonderwiess had made a mess out of the sheets and pillows, building a fort in the corner of the room. Luppi sat on one of the aforementioned beds, twirling the phone cord around his finger while he said horrible, unspeakable things to a phone sex line operator.

Yammy was conspicuously absent.

"Where is Yammy?"

Grimmjaw didn't peel his eyes away from the screen as he grunted, "Bathroom." Luppi continued saying things that would put most people in therapy.

Ulquiorra wheeled and marched to the door, throwing it open without a thought. There were not locks in Hueco Mundo and no reason to keep things from your fellow Hollows. It never occurred to him to knock.

How desperately he wished he'd followed after the humans in that one respect.

Ulquiorra froze. Yammy froze. Yammy was naked, his clothes piled neatly in the corner while he stood, flexing and bulging, in front of a full length mirror.

The seconds passed for what felt like hours.

Yammy found his voice first. "Ulquiorra…am I…attractive?"

Ulquiorra slammed the door shut and wheeled faster than he thought possible. He aimlessly wandered back toward one of the beds, where he sat heavily.

"See something you like?" Luppi quipped from behind him, having grown bored with his talk of duct tape, cheese, nipple clamps, and goats.

"No," Ulquiorra shot him a withering gaze. "No, I did not."

"Eh, you look like you could use a beer." Grimmjaw put the remote aside to toss Ulquiorra a can from the small mountain of six-packs he had somehow missed.

"When did you—"

"When you were busy chatting up Lord Douche-bag, I went on a beer run for some brewskies."

"Brewskies?" Ulquiorra arched an incredulous eyebrow. "What have you been watching?"

"I don't know," Grimmjaw frowned, staring intently as some American program. "Oh, there it is. It's some MTV show called 'The Real World.'"

"Then we shall destroy MTV once the world is ours."

"Yeah," Grimmjaw replied, not really listening. "In the meantime, drink up, bitches!"

"I fail to see what female dogs have to do with our situation, Grimmjaw," Ulquiorra replied. But he drank the beer anyway.

* * *

Ulquiorra awoke to what smelled like a combination of smoke, chicken, blood, and at least three other things he couldn't identify (and wasn't sure he really wanted to know either). He spent the first several seconds straightening his hair, which had been glued to the side of his face by a generous helping of his own drool. That was the second time something was wrong. He was the stoic soldier. He would never do something as unsightly as drool in his sleep.

"Status report," Ulquiorra called out weakly while his eyes adjusted to the light. Why was the room spinning? The red numbers of a digital clock stabbed into his eyeballs but he managed to get a glimpse of the time before he jerked his head away. The sun was about to set. He had been inactive for more than twenty-four hours.

It finally occurred to him that no one had answered him.

"Luppi." The phone wasn't on its hook, a woman whispering about the things she would do to Luppi with a car battery and a rubber chicken. Ulquiorra took upon himself to hang up before she could get any further.

"Grimmjaw." A modern art sculpture had been planted on the table, constructed entirely out of old beer cans.

"Wonderweiss." The fort had fallen into disrepair.

"…Yammy." He tip-toed to the bathroom before realizing tip-toeing wasn't the sort of thing any self-respecting Arrancar would do. Then again, it was hard to keep any shred of dignity alive with the roommates from hell. This time, he knocked. Loudly. Repeatedly. Vigorously. He even knocked with a _cero_, blowing the door off its hinges.

There was no Yammy to be found but Ulquiorra couldn't be too safe. He had nothing against nudity, male or female, yet there was an unspeakable _wrongness _that went with the idea of Yammy being naked. The words shouldn't have even gone into a sentence together unless it went something like 'Seeing Yammy naked is the kind of torment I would not wish upon my worst enemy.'

It was then that he noticed the pile of denim lying near the bathtub. There was only one in their group who had been wearing that much denim. There was only one person who had gotten naked in the bathroom, only one who wore clothes in those sizes.

Ulquiorra's voice went low and raw, "Oh my non-existent God!"

Yammy's nakedness had been unleashed on the entire world.

* * *

He moved as quickly as his legs would carry him, but not too quickly, not with a hangover like that. Yammy's pants dangled from his hands, which had gone white with panic. He clutched the piece of clothing to his chest like a talisman, the thing that would ward off Yammy's nakedness. Just thinking of it was enough to stagger him.

Fortunately, he didn't have to go far before he picked up on Yammy's trail.

Two blocks away, the Arrancar wrestled with four human police officers who were trying to book him on public nudity charges. They were hesitant to touch him, relying on clubs and the like. They had even decided to taze him, bro. Normally, it wouldn't have even been a contest, but Yammy's lingering drunkenness made things difficult, just difficult enough that he couldn't fight them off but not so much that they could overpower him. They were fighting a zero-sum game.

Ulquiorra was drawn by the sounds of Yammy's shouts and happened upon the terrible scene before it could get any worse.

"Stand back, sir!" One of the policemen had the presence of mind to shout his way. "It's dangerous!"

"You have no idea," Ulquiorra almost grimaced. Instead, he decided to do his part. He hefted the jeans and tossed them toward the officers like a javelin. "These are his pants!"

The officer in question immediately got the idea and tried to order his men to force him into the jeans. They adamantly refused and kept on refusing until he pointed out that they had two choices: Put the pants on him or don't put the pants on him. When he put it like that, there was really only one choice: Contain that which should not be.

After a few more horrible, clothing-free minutes, the officers finally forced some clothing back on Yammy. Ulquiorra could have sworn this moment coincided with the sun coming out from behind the clouds and birds chirping happily, but he couldn't be sure.

"Officers," Ulquiorra walked up to the weary men, one of whom had passed out. He made them an offer they couldn't refuse. "Allow me to take custody of this man and I promise you will never have to deal with something like this ever again."

* * *

"Just look at me."

Ulquiorra did no such thing.

"I said I was sorry."

Ulquiorra didn't care.

"Stop giving me the silent treatment already! We…we hardly take anymore as it is. You never make time for just us."

It went on like this for some time before the shorter of the two wheeled on his newly dressed companion. "You will stand there very quietly while I go about trying to salvage this operation. Do I make myself clear?"

Yammy sulked for a moment but nodded weakly. Ulquiorra took a moment to steady himself and cleanse himself of the images burned into his retinas. Fortunately, those could be destroyed and he could grow new ones. Still, he wondered if he would ever be free of the sight—Yammy, like a grocery bag full of lumpy, uneven meat that had gone bad weeks ago.

He nearly blacked out.

* * *

The tempo assaulted Ulquiorra's eardrums. He had never much cared for music, but even he could pick out an awful band when he heard one.

"Are you sure this is where Grimmjaw is?"

Yammy nodded.

Suppressing a sigh, the two of them shouldered their way through the dimly lit, surging room full of teenage emotions, bad hair, and even worse make up. At the center of the madness they found a one-armed hell raiser taking full advantage of the mosh pit. He took it as a cue to beat the ever-loving crap out of everyone in arm's reach and pass it off as another part of the game. Impressively enough, he even managed to do it to the rhythm of the song.

"Grimmjaw!" Yammy boomed at their companion, who was busy wailing on a kid dressed like a vampire.

"Damn it!" The one-armed Arrancar cursed at being found. "It looks like you're here to crash the party, huh?"

At that, several of the 'dancers' turned to cast suspicious eyes on Ulquiorra and Yammy, muttering something about "narcs."

"Grimmjaw, do not think turning the crowd against us will save you. You do not possess Lord Aizen's capacity for manipulation."

"Maybe not, but I thought you would be into this sort of thing, Ulquiorra. Hell, half the goth-chicks here look just like you."

For the first time since arriving in the dingy little concert hall, Ulquiorra stood back and took in everything around him. Most of it was fairly innocuous, at least until his eyes landed on the stage and he stopped to listen to their lyrics. The fools on stage were another of those 'hardcore' heavy metal bands that liked singing about the Devil and other material that tried to be edgy.

His left eye began to twitch like a ticking time bomb.

"Oh, hell yeah, here we go!" Grimmjaw crowed triumphantly.

"Satan?" Ulquiorra's mouth quivered.

"Ulquiorra," Yammy's voice rose surprisingly high in distress. "Don't do anything dumb."

"They like talking about gods and devils, do they?"

"Hey, you were the one who said we had to keep a low profile, right?" Yammy knew terrible things happened when Ulquiorra had a nihilism attack.

"Ah, piss off, Yammy! This is going to be great!" Grimmjaw's murderous smile was at full tilt.

"I would be happy to show you all just what it is to be a demon."

"Kiss your sorry asses goodbye, emo kids!" Grimmjaw looked like he had landed on cloud nine.

"Bind, Murciélago."

* * *

"That was the best concert ever." Grimmjaw remarked to no one in particular. He looked particularly crazed as they exited the smoldering theater, with blood all over his face.

"That was the only concert you've ever been to," Yammy pointed out.

"That just proves my point."

Ulquiorra, who had been silent up until now, turned on his companion. "You will never speak of these events to anyone ever again."

* * *

"I can't believe it," Grimmjaw gaped in spite of himself. "Out of all of us, it was the Dumbass Supreme who figured out where Wonder-kid wound up."

"I am a master of observation," Yammy shot back. "When I remembered that little dog suit Luppi put him in, I knew there was only one place he could be."

They were at the pound. Wonderweiss sat in a cage, yapping at the three of them happily.

"What was it that made you recall the dog suit?" Ulquiorra couldn't fight the morbid interest.

"Oh, well, it was just the cutest little thing."

Grimmjaw and Ulquiorra traded looks.

"Oh, what, just because I'm the Espada of Destruction I can't appreciate something precious when I see it? I'm a multi-faceted man! I HAVE LAYERS!"

The terrified veterinarian who had taken the three of them back to the kennel looked like he was about wet himself in fear. Ulquiorra moved to capitalize.

"The sooner you hand over that...dog…the sooner we leave."

* * *

"Christ, would you stop humping my leg!?" Grimmjaw grit his teeth as his foot failed to connect with Wonderweiss, who was surprisingly fast on his feet. "I don't know what kind of crap they put him on down at that vet's officer, but it's making him act weird."

"Christ does not exist," Ulquiorra's voice escaped of its own accord. This trip had been murder on his nihilism.

"Anyway…" Grimmjaw segued smoothly. "Why are we letting the kid play bloodhound? Can't we just sense him the old-fashioned way?"

"No, Luppi has apparently gone to great lengths to conceal his presence from us."

"Great," Grimmjaw muttered as Wonderweiss took them on a magical mystery tour through Karakura's seedier districts.

"Can I hold the leash, Ulquiorra?" Yammy spoke up hopefully.

"Don't do it, man. He'd probably just wind with the kid suckling at his chest. Seriously, where did that mother hen complex come from?"

"Go to hell, Grimmjaw."

"You first, fatty," Grimmjaw countered oh-so-wittily as a _cero _smoldered in his hand.

"Silence," Ulquiorra's voice cut through the cool night air. Wonderweiss had come to a stop, wagging his costume tail. "We've arrived."

Once again, Grimmjaw said what they were all thinking.

"Luppi's big plan was to hide out at a nightclub?"

* * *

The techno tempo was enough to make Ulquiorra's eyes throb, but at least it was a step up from the metal concert. He wanted to kill everyone here, but that was par for the course. At least the club goers didn't court his berserker switch.

"Wonderweiss," he shouted over the wailing synthesizers. "Find Luppi."

The blond boy gave a shout and what was almost a salute as the started sniffing his way through the crowd. The hunt took them to the bar, where the foursome laid eyes on a pretty young thing with blush on her cheeks, glitter in her hair, and lilac lipstick all over her luscious lips.

"So, Luppi, you finally decided to come out of the closet?" Grimmjaw drawled acerbically.

"Oh, you!" Luppi stamped a stiletto heel with a girlish pout. "You're going to ruin all my fun!"

He was wearing a scandalously short skirt, fish net stockings, and a barely-there top desperately clinging to his torso on spaghetti straps in addition to the pump-me pumps.

It took every ounce of Grimmjaw's self-control not to burst into tears of laughter. Yammy had shot past that point a long time ago. Wonderweiss just looked like he wanted to claim the bar as his territory by urinating on it. Ulquiorra twitched.

No part of the display stopped the bartender from planting a fruity beverage of some sort in front of Luppi with a nod toward the man who had bought it. Ulquiorra thought to intervene, knowing this could only end badly for everyone involved, but some perverse sense of wonder kept him still. The man in question came gliding around the bar with a hot-stuff strut and introduced himself. Luppi flashed his prettiest smile and introduced himself with his voice pitched as low it could possibly go.

"The pleasure is all mine, honey bunch." It sounded like Yammy's voice coming out of Luppi's mouth.

Yammy and Grimmjaw wound up on the floor as they laugh-cried themselves into a stupor. They cackled like hyenas, taking in big, gulping breaths to keep themselves from choking on the hilarity. Wonderweiss got in on the act, howling with joy and clapping excitedly. Even Ulquiorra had to admit that was impressive.

"We must go." He said quickly. If this went on, he might actually crack a smile. That could not be allowed. Worse yet, he could even laugh at Luppi's brand of dating terrorism. They had to go as soon as possible.

"N-n-no, Ulq," Grimmjaw did his best to form coherent sentences in between chuckles. "Th-this is t-too good to p-pass up."

"No, Grimmjaw, we are leaving." He shot a look Luppi's way. "Do not look at me in such a way. I am well aware of your original gender."

"You, maybe, and a couple of others, but I've barely started on this club! You have to let me work through them until I'm done."

"W-wait," Grimmjaw had somehow found the strength to stand through his giggle fits. "I think I have a compromise."

Ulquiorra didn't have time to agree.

"Yammy," Grimmjaw ordered snappily, "lift Luppi up so everyone in here can see him."

Yammy did as he was told, not quite understanding but laughing so hard he didn't mind being bossed around. When Luppi was well off the ground, Grimmjaw cupped his hand to his mouth.

"HEY, ALL YOU SMOOTH OPERATORS! THE LITTLE LADY HAS SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU!"

A sea of intensely interested (mostly male) heads turned to eye Luppi like a piece of meat.

Then, reading Grimmjaw perfectly, Luppi dropped his skirt and let it all hang out.

"Say hello to my little friend!"

* * *

"That was a ridiculous waste of time." Ulquiorra muttered as his accomplices fled the scene of a massive riot in downtown Karakura. Wonderweiss trotted along at a comfortable pace as the only one in the group who wasn't laughing himself a nice shade of blue.

"That totally made my night."

"The guy who broke down crying was the best one of the bunch."

"You didn't see the one who threw up in the corner."

"_Enough_." Ulquiorra snapped. "We have failed to collect so much as a single scrap of useful information on the Soul Reapers garrisoned here. We are not any closer to defeating them."

Grimmjaw and Yammy shifted uncomfortably. Luppi just beamed.

"Actually, Ulqui-baby, I took care of all that before I went club-hopping."

Ulquiorra ignored the stupid part of that sentence. "What do you mean?"

"I had a friend cook up a secret weapon for us. I also took the liberty of issuing a challenge to those dweebs for sunset at the park across town, too. We can settle this all in one stroke."

Ulquiorra dared to hope. Had something finally gone right? "You will take us to this weapon."

* * *

Toshiro Hitsugaya was normally one to keep his cool, despite all the horrible puns that had earned him over the years. But sitting here, on high alert, just waiting to see if the Hollows lived up to their word…it was eating away at him. He felt anxious. When were they going to show themselves?

…not that his compatriots cared. Ayasegawa and Madarame were thumb-wrestling. Abarai was arguing with Kurosaki over who had the better sword in a conversation that was rife with innuendo. Matsumoto and Kuchiki girl talked.

He sighed. Things were going nowhere fast.

Then the bushes rustled and he tensed. "Show yourselves!"

Seconds passed. Voices rose in irritation.

"Get out there!"

"No way! We look ridiculous!"

"We look fabulous!"

"It's obvious we're going to get our asses handed to us. Why should we even bother?"

"Just get out there!" The first voice was accompanied by a loud smash, like a foot upside someone's head, then a blue shape came sailing out of the woods to land in a tangled heap some distance away.

"Screw you, Luppi! I'm going to kill the shit out of you when we get back to—" He became acutely aware of the multiple sets of eyes on him. The eyes, in turn, were acutely aware of the spandex and how much of it there was and how blue it was. It actually hurt their eyes to look directly at it. "Uh…yeah…I'm Grimmjaw Jagerjaques."

"THE GIMP!" A voice announced from the bushes.

"What the hell, man!?"

Another boot and another mass came crashing down to earth. This one was huge and green and also covered in spandex.

"I'm Yammy Rialgo," the newcomer announced in confusion.

"THE GENTLE GREEN GIANT!" That voice resounded again.

"I'm not gentle at all! I'm a manly man!"

"Who loves cute things," Grimmjaw snarked at him.

"We already had this conversation! LAYERS, DAMN IT! LAYERS!"

A third figure landed in their midst. This was short and boyish and decked out in yellow spandex.

"Ooooooh!" Wonderweiss howled.

"THE TEAM MASCOT!"

"I will not suffer this indignity." A new voice stated.

"Oh, yes, you will!" A boot, a landing. This one was apparently the Black Ranger of the bunch.

Ulquiorra sighed with no small amount of resentment. His voice was particularly monotonous. "I am Ulquiorra Schiffer."

"THE PANDASPADA!"

"…Well?" Yammy grunted.

"What is it, Yammy?"

"Aren't you going to complain about your name?"

"Why should I?"

"Well…you know…we all whined about our names and we have a theme going on here."

Ulquiorra paused, considered, and spoke.

"Very well, then: I take umbrage with the name I have been given. There is nothing at all panda-like about me. Pandas are creatures much-beloved and adored by the human populace. They bring joy and happiness wherever they go with their cuddly appearance. I find the very notion of my likeness being compared to theirs nothing short of repulsive. When Lord Aizen becomes the king of all things, I shall make it a capital offense to love pandas."

"Dude," Grimmjaw snorted. "You don't love pandas? That's pretty fucked up. Hell, I'm a hard ass and _I_ love pandas."

"Yeah, Ulquiorra, way to be a total meanie," Yammy made no attempt to hide the contempt in his eyes. "They're only the cutest things in the world."

Wonderweiss was crying again.

If Ulquiorra could admit to ever having felt any emotions, he would say he hated them all no more than in that moment. And they weren't done yet.

A fifth and final figure burst from the bushes, all decked out in purple. He looked like the musician Prince.

"I AM ESPADA LILAC, THE MOST DASHING AND DANGEROUS OF THEM ALL!"

He struck a pose and held it until the other four all followed suit, however reluctantly.

"AND TOGETHER WE ARE…_**ARRANCAR FORCE FIVE**_!"

By this point, Hitsugaya's team had reacted to the display the same way Grimmjaw and Yammy had reacted to Luppi's diabolical genius in the club. They were all in various states of laugh attacks.

"Hurry, now, my brave Arrancarangers! We must defeat them while they're incapacitated!"

"I thought we were the Arrancar Force Five." Grimmjaw felt compelled to point that out for some reason.

"Whatever!" Luppi responded eloquently. "Say your release words so we can transform and show them our true power!"

Ulquiorra was about to refuse as adamantly as possible before Grimmjaw beat him to the punch.

"We might as well. We couldn't possibly look any stupider than we are now."

"Do you really want to test that hypothesis, Grimmjaw?" Ulquiorra's tone was severe. "With all we've gone through since arriving in the human world, will you really tempt irony that much?"

Everyone else shrugged.

"GRIND!"

"DESTROY!

"UUUUUUUUAAAAA!"

Ulquiorra sighed. "Bind…"

"Say with passion, Pandaspada!" Espada Lilac encouraged. "For passion is the true source of our strength!

"…BIND!"

"STRANGLE!" Espada Lilac struck a victorious pose. "And I'll form the head!"

And then something horrible happened. Something worse than naked Yammy or transvestite Luppi. They fused into a single, gigantic entity that would make Godzilla weep. It was all limbs and wings and fur and scales and a million other things that came together that formed a creature so hideous that Hitsugaya's team instantly blacked out as their minds shut down to protect themselves from the sight of it.

"Oh, God, Luppi! What did you do to us!?"

("God does not exist.")

"I only did what was natural, The Gimp! I allowed us to cast off our weak, individual bodies so that we could perform a blazing union in the name of truest passion, becoming the shining champion of Hollows everywhere, THE ARRANCARZORD!"

"Exactly which 'friend' of yours constructed these suits?" Ulquiorra wondered how he had let that little bit slip past.

"Why, it was the noble shopkeeper of truth, of course! The one and only SCIENCE LAD!"

"No fucking way…" Grimmjaw groaned.

"You asked Kisuke Urahara to construct a series of spirit-modifying suits for us and you never thought this might be an ill-advised strategy?"

"Of course not!"

"Shit, Ulquiorra!" Grimmjaw begged. "Stop grinding your teeth. My spleen is next to your tongue!"

Ulquiorra paused, chewed, and considered. "I believe you are correct, Grimmjaw."

* * *

The Arrancar refused to make eye contact with each other. This was so much worse than waking up from a night of hard drinking and finding out you had sex with your roommates. The Arrancarzord…there was no way any of them possibly put into words what it was like to fuse into that blasphemy.

Once they pried themselves apart, the Arrancar agreed to dispose of those accursed suits as soon as possible, tossing them all in a ditch and taking turns roasting them with _ceros_ until not even ash remained. They couldn't possibly continue with the mission at this point. It would be better to swallow their pride and go crawling back to Aizen.

Which was why the five were all huddled on the bus again.

"So."

The word hung heavy in the air, laced with honey and poison.

"Is there something you would like to say, Grimmjaw?" Ulquiorra was taking it all surprisingly well.

"I can kill Luppi when we get back, right?"

"I am surprised you even felt the need to ask. If you didn't do it, I would."

"Good." A pause. "So, how are we going to swing this with Aizen?"

"I am not certain." Ulquiorra allowed his hands to drift over his eyes. "However, I cannot allow any records of this terrible event to exist."

"What if the Reapers squeal on us?"

"The Arrancarzord is a thing of such vile, putrid evil that I doubt even the Reapers could stomach the thought of acknowledging it ever existed."

With that, he plucked out his eyes and smashed them.

"Has anyone ever told you how fucking creepy you are, Ulquiorra?"

"All the time."


End file.
